Fenrìr wrote:So what are people's thoughts on the nerf to Tentacles? I'm yet to get one as weapons for my ret spec are the bane of existence, but it'd be nice to hear what other people think / are experiencing.

I was pleased to see Blizzard say the sword is doing what they wanted it to do. Naturally some pvp'ers bitched about the proc, but hey, they bitch about everything. The Blue post told them to deal with it, and another recent blue post pretty much told everyone who posts on the forums to fuck off. They know what every class is doing and they buff or nurf accordingly. While some may not like that fact, it's how things should be. As usual a well played Ret Paladin does competitive DPS.

Sure at times you do get lucky and have a small army of tentacles up. The change to it procing off censure was justified and is live now.

Currently I'm running 4pc T13 (only one of which is a 397 itl), & I have the 403 sword.

Last night, our 25 man Alizabal kill took us 2:19.

Over all I did a total of 4,650,635 damage and my "Pet" accounted for 296,136 of that total damage.

My Pet's Mind Flay did a total of 296,136 damage with 18 total ticks. 12 average ticks @ 13,922.6 for a total of 167,071 damage.6 crit ticks @ 21,510.8 for a total of 129,065 damage.Total uptime was 00:18 (12.8 %)

Now assuming the 12 second duration stays in once 4.3.2 goes live, and I get 2 more seconds of the proc, how many more ticks am I going to see on a fight like this?

In any case, the normal and heroic versions of this sword will still be a Ret Paladin's BIS weapons for the rest of this expansion.

Ana and I did some pretty extensive testing on this last night both in and out of raid.

- Proc rate was almost halved. Their contribution to my damage on Ultraxion dropped from 13.9% to 6.1%. Similar results from logs on Morchok and Yor'sahj.

- Training dummy tests confirm the proc rate is down to about 2%, as Exemplar from EJ theorized. I managed a 1.86% proc rate across about 500 tests, while Parabald posted that he was seeing about 2.1% across about 1k.

- Looking at some fury logs for Ultraxion, they're averaging 12-13%, about same as pre-nerf ret. Pre-nerf ret's numbers in PPM were a bit higher than Unholy DKs, but lower than Arms or Fury.

- The biggest PvP problem is probably the slow. There is no PvE purpose for this and it should be removed.

- It is not Ret's fault that Fury is a broken spec. The sword is the problem. Fix the sword, and the GO FUCKING FIX FURY if its numbers are still too low, don't beat us up.

- SoT being a melee attack isn't a bug--half of our attacks are spells. This mechanic is essential to us being a viable melee class. The other alternative is to make AoW Exo, Holy Wrath, and HoW (not sure about this one) count as a melee attack for ret like Judgement does.

- The community moderators don't all understand the difference between Seal of Truth and Censure.

- And finally, I am embarassed, ashamed, and mortified that one of my own guild members, and a community MvP at that, is a major contributor to this misinformation-spreading, fearmongering, ret-hating witch hunt. It is truly and utterally a disgrace that he's allowed his paladin-inferiority-complex to leak into this and I can't even describe my level of embarassment at having to appologize for him in this forum. I'm sorry.

"Don't facepalm at me... Ret paladins don't facepalm each other. Its against the code!" -Anafielle

Yea, I just got caught up on the paladin stuff over at EJ. It is a bit sickening at how much it was nerfed. Hopefully I get the axe from Yor'sahj this week over the trials (yea right...I'm a tank, luls).

Could be worse, you could be a tank in LFR, where every week a new person needs your Souldrinkers, and you don't get to roll on Ret weapons. (/whinge) It was interesting, though, that that sword is so well regarded that all of the PvP-ers I've read say things like "Go get that sword". Time to make a DPS spec, I guess!

Fenrìr wrote:Yea, I just got caught up on the paladin stuff over at EJ. It is a bit sickening at how much it was nerfed. Hopefully I get the axe from Yor'sahj this week over the trials (yea right...I'm a tank, luls).

Exemplar posing on the EJ forums wrote: Gur'thalak is not dead. Sky is not falling. Mars does not need women. Please return to your normally scheduled programs.

Fenrìr wrote:Yea, I just got caught up on the paladin stuff over at EJ. It is a bit sickening at how much it was nerfed. Hopefully I get the axe from Yor'sahj this week over the trials (yea right...I'm a tank, luls).

If it helps, the sword is still pretty wildly BiS IIRC.

"Don't facepalm at me... Ret paladins don't facepalm each other. Its against the code!" -Anafielle

warden wrote:- The community moderators don't all understand the difference between Seal of Truth and Censure.

Pretty sure the same issue cropped up with the axe from the Bonestorm!!!! guy. I believe it is the application of Censure upon the target that is counted as the melee attack (my logs show misses Censure which isn't possible with a DoT), not the proc of Seal of Truth damage. So it isn't that they don't understand it just that, as always, Paladin mechanics are goofy.

Seal of Truth: Name of the self buff. Name of the Direct Damage weapon attack.Censure: Name of the secondary attack you do when SoT is active that stacks the same named Censure DoT.

We live in a society where people born on third base constantly try to steal second, yet we expect people born with two strikes against them to hit a homerun on the first pitch.

Normal Gur remains ahead of Heroic Scalpel or Cudgel by about 500 DPS.

That's at an average 8.5 ticks. Looking at the logs linked above I'm still seeing an average of 8.5 ticks, even though the proc supposedly lasts an additional 2 seconds (previously 10, now 12). Even at 9 ticks flat the rankings order would not change (though all classes with Gur would do a bit more DPS).

As for Gur proccing from Rend ticks for Warriors - we have to suck it up this time. TAiaJ procced abnormally high for Ret compared to other classes. Item imbalances occur. We got the short end of the stick this time, which is a shame, but just because we're not the one accidentally stronger should not be a reason for us to complain. I'm of the opinion that forum complaints about another class and requests to correct/nerf them serve no one - they don't increase our capabilities and only hurt raiding as a whole. This is why I've always pushed to let Blizzard know when something procs too much/little - better they fix it and get numbers where they want than leave it and "fix" something else and accidentally destroy a class (which has happened at times).

Edit: Confirmed - Rend does not proc. Doesn't change the point of the above paragraph, so it will not be altered.

I don't doubt it... Not everyone does. I prefer simcraft over Exemplar's spreadsheet myself (don't like his haste modeling), but neither is proven conclusively right. I'll be rolling on the next H Specimen that drops just in case. I'm really hoping Blizzard comes to their senses, reverts the changes, and then fixes the sword, hopefully with a reasonable ICD, but we'll see.

Also, I was getting about 1400 dps for the post-nerf tentacles from Gurth, but only had time to run about 450k cycles on simcraft. Interesting stuff though:

*** I'm not sure how much I trust these, so I hesitate to post them elsewhere... Those ret numbers just seem a LOT lower than what I see in logs for myself and Ana. The arms numbers also seem a bit low.

"Don't facepalm at me... Ret paladins don't facepalm each other. Its against the code!" -Anafielle

I've had no issue with Eye or Vessel stacks, but those were never hard to build/maintain anyway. Pliers and others were reporting problems with AoK (I don't use it on the fights I was doing the last two nights), and some posters on EJ, Official Forums and MMO Champion were talking about possible reductions in Landslide and proccing-trinket uptime along with AoK. I'll take a peek at the logs from the last couple nights and see if I can determine anything. I'd also appreciate anyone with a Bone-Link Fettesh to look at theirs and post the results.

Edit: Data on this is being updated fairly quickly on EJ. Current analysis there tends to indicate that trinkets and Landslide are not affected, with the possible exception of AoK. Most of my information is coming from the EJ Ret thread; I'm going to link it below for those interested in keeping up to date to avoid bumping this thread 3-4 times/day.

How often have you needed to taunt a boss at the beginning of the fight this expansion? Unless you'd already heard about the bug or you're a bad tank that taunts at the beginning of the pull I can see your ret paladin dieing in the confusion the first time.

and NO we don't have a Ret Pally in our raid, and I haven't experienced the bug first hand. just saying, if ever seeing that I lose aggro, my first reflex is to press "1" which is my taunt. agreed und er normal circumstances I didn't need to taunt at the beginning of a fight in a long time. (except for some stupid dps pulls) but the refelxes are still there.

and as soon as the bug is known. the ret pulls up righteous fury gets external CDs and get easy tank for 10 to 15 seconds, at which point aggro cap would be reached considering the log above.

Levantine wrote:How often have you needed to taunt a boss at the beginning of the fight this expansion? Unless you'd already heard about the bug or you're a bad tank that taunts at the beginning of the pull I can see your ret paladin dieing in the confusion the first time.

Bad tanks taunt on the pull? News to me. Late misdirect, tricks to other dps, having first two attacks miss - a tank that doesn't taunt as they pull to guarantee aggro for first 3 seconds is what I'd consider bad.

Levantine wrote:How often have you needed to taunt a boss at the beginning of the fight this expansion? Unless you'd already heard about the bug or you're a bad tank that taunts at the beginning of the pull I can see your ret paladin dieing in the confusion the first time.

Bad tanks taunt on the pull? News to me. Late misdirect, tricks to other dps, having first two attacks miss - a tank that doesn't taunt as they pull to guarantee aggro for first 3 seconds is what I'd consider bad.

Don't confuse compensating for regular bad behaviour (the bug free kind) from the rest of the raid with a good habit to have in general. What I'm curious over is how you can have a late Misdirection? Are your Hunters not as eager to pew pew as your casters who are precasting nukes?

In pugs late/no mds are common. Also with guilds other than my main's guild. When MM was the spec of choice the opening shot was a 2 secondish aimed shot hardcast, and on some fights pre-casting wasn't possible (Sinestra without resetting). With pre-casting in general, you frequently get someone who goes a half second earlier than anyone else, and if it's a pyroblast crit then even a misdirected explosive shot that doesn't crit coupled with a miss or two might not be enough anyway.

Why on earth would someone not taunt on the pull? With a second taunt to cover the five seconds before taunt comes back off cd I have no idea why you wouldn't.